Thunderstorm Wind in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana

A tree was downed near Calhoun.

A cluster of thunderstorms developed across Northern Louisiana during the late afternoon and early evening on August 17th. As these thunderstorms and the associated outflow boundaries moved southwest, they encountered increasing instability with temperatures in the upper 90s to near 100 degrees and dewpoints in the lower 70s, yielding 3000 J/kg MLCAPE. Despite the stronger instability, shear was quite weak. This weak shear resulted in very unorganized storms with numerous strong outflows. Strong storm cores supported the threat for microbursts, particularly where outflow boundary collisions occurred. As a result, a few thunderstorms became severe and produced damaging wind gusts across portions of Northeast Louisiana.